SimHeaven's X-Europe for XP12 analysis...

[UKflyer 630]

4 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Agreed! Simhaven does the opposite. Slams the sim with tons of objects. Tells it to draw stuff you can't even see.

oh i didn't know that, so the rendering distance slider has no effect with simheaven?? That's not good. Thanks

[jcomm 5,985]

I somehow recall one could edit some settings in SimHeaven ( XP11 ) to lower the "LOD" ?  Anyone has it present ?

Not that I suffer from using it. I actually keep MSI Afterburner running in the background to throttle my GPU to no more than 65º C core temp, in NCP limit FPS to 32, have VSync in game, and still have lot's of room to spare! 32 FPS sharp & stable when running XP12, now even with up to 9 (nine) AI aircraft...

Edited October 13, 2022 by jcomm

[BobFS88 651]

2 hours ago, UKflyer said:

not very efficient when you get 25 fps looking at distant objects, fairly simple scenery, no complex airport or cockpit

You also have to understand that he admitted he didn't have his graphic setup optimized to run that scenery with all of his sliders slam to right and would have to review Q8pilot settings. No one should expect and total optimize experience knowing that your mileage will vary with the hardware resources you have and his are close but not as high as mine and I don't all my sliders to the right. He's only running a 3080ti that has 12 gig Vram along with his streaming software which could be a factor with his performance under load. Add 24 gigs of Vram in a  RTX 3090 and take away the streaming software and your results maybe different from his.  

Edited October 13, 2022 by BobFS88

[blingthinger 649]

13 minutes ago, UKflyer said:

oh i didn't know that, so the rendering distance slider has no effect with simheaven?? That's not good. Thanks

Dunno about slider functionality w/ that 3rd party addon. You could be right....but what I did see is the slider was maxed out. I can max that slider in the baseline sim and it runs just fine. That IS good.

[rka 916]

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

What do you mean by "headroom"? I see oodles and kaboodles of headroom. Recall that the XP engine is extremely efficient: a stunning graphics engine running on little more than 1.5 core's worth of CPU usage. This leaves a great deal of "headroom" for future growth, even on a 4 core system. Possibilities open up when one doesn't need a flubbed CFD model hogging CPU cores (5 threads iirc) to make up for FM pitfalls.

As @mSparks pointed out a bit ago, one of the biggest issues w/ framerate and performance is 3rd party devs who don't fully take advantage of multithreading in their plugins.

And I must apologize to this poor dead horse for one more beating: itS a BetAaaAA.

Very promising, actually. Even for scenery devs like Simhaven.

Wow, now you're trying to sell usage of only 1,5 cores as an advantage? Lol. 

Headroom is what XEurope, being absolutely necessary to achieve minimum realism with regard to ones surroundings and landmarks, uses up almost entirely, leaving little room for other add-ons that potentially could greatly help in other under-developed areas. 

Systems have more than one point five cores for a reason, and that reason is not not to use them 😄

[Murmur 3,944]

4 minutes ago, rka said:

Wow, now you're trying to sell usage of only 1,5 cores as an advantage? Lol. 

In a sense it is. It would be much worse if it used all cores with low performance! The fact that there's a lot of headroom for CPU usage improvement is a good thing.

[rka 916]

10 minutes ago, Murmur said:

In a sense it is. It would be much worse if it used all cores with low performance! The fact that there's a lot of headroom for CPU usage improvement is a good thing.

I see. That's quite an advantage XP has here then.

[blingthinger 649]

11 minutes ago, rka said:

Wow, now you're trying to sell usage of only 1,5 cores as an advantage?

Absolutely. Given what it's drawing on the screen, 1,5 cores is incredibly efficient. It's very impressive. XP has always been the most efficient sim in terms of object draw rates and use of efficient algorithms means plenty of headroom to grow (and/or FPS to gain).

LR has readily admitted that they still have a lot of multi-threading work ahead of them in code development. I recall Ben saying they were targeting 8 core CPUs in the long term. Part of that development involves implementing communication techniques to work with 3rd party addons as they start to use more cores too. 

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm impatient to see these development results. Knowing what is possible and what is coming, 1,5 cores does trigger a whimper right now. I suppose you could say that for me...XP is the "drug" :). I'm hooked all around.

[Murmur 3,944]

Just now, rka said:

I see. That's quite an advantage XP has here then.

If it means that fully utilizing all cores its performance would be much better, then yes, it is a potential advantage!

[Murmur 3,944]

Apparently XP is pushing a lot more 3d objects in the scenery compared to MSFS, and this would (at least partly) explain the difference in performance.

Look at the screenshots below taken in identical conditions. Settings are: "HIGH" in MSFS; full right ("maximum") for scenery density, "high" for rendering distance in XP.

The more distant areas (including the mountains across the river, although 3d objects there are not visible due to distance) are completely barren in MSFS, but crowded with 3d objects in XP.

In the less distant areas, again XP is pushing much more objects (probably too much, drawing trees where there should be none). Lots of buildings in XP, flat orthophoto in MSFS.

Also, in XP tree density seems to be A LOT higher! Given that the screenshots have been taken in identical position, altitude and FOV, this means that apparently one of the two sims is drawing trees at a seriously wrong size. Maybe they are too big in MSFS? Or too small in XP?

But what counts is the final visual result, and even though MSFS has a lot less objects on screen, we know that its scenery usually looks (for the most part) better. I think this is due to the fact that they succeeded in harmonizing perfectly the underlying orthophoto with the 3d assets, and that's what meets the eyes when using the sim. Even though, as we have seen, MSFS scenery is far from perfect if one pays attention to details.

Also, XP is doing very aggressive Z-clipping for distant scenery objects. If we use a higher FOV, we can see the unrealistic clipping line of 3d objects in the distance, while in MSFS it seems to appear more gradual. In this case, it is MSFS which is drawing objects further out. Maybe something LR should work on.

Also, apparently performance is actually _improving_ with a smaller FOV (and more objects visible in the distance!), 35 vs 55 FPS in those screenshots! So, consider about lowering a bit your FOV to gain some FPS.

 

 

 

 

Edited October 13, 2022 by Murmur

[blingthinger 649]

27 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Maybe they are too big in MSFS? Or too small in XP?

I bet a bit of both. I also think that the trees make it difficult to compare absolute object count. Asobo's trees don't appear to be traditional objects when you get up close. They look almost like the clouds do at a distance: dancing pixels and blurry. Makes me think there's different tech going on there than a traditional triangle-based geometry.

I recall your post a while back with the mod applied to the 2D XP trees that made them more full, which did look better in some situations.

[Murmur 3,944]

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

I bet a bit of both. I also think that the trees make it difficult to compare absolute object count. Asobo's trees don't appear to be traditional objects when you get up close. They look almost like the clouds do at a distance: dancing pixels and blurry. Makes me think there's different tech going on there than a traditional triangle-based geometry.

Yes, I think MSFS is using some sort of "impostor" 2D billboards for tree, so probably they have little performance impact. But the final result is very good at altitude or at some distance, less so when you're up close or when you pay close attention to them.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,894]

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

But what counts is the final visual result, and even though MSFS has a lot less objects on screen, we know that its scenery usually looks (for the most part) better

Despite the lack of autogen shadows, I find XP12 with ortho (ZL17 everywhere) and SimHeaven X-World more convincing in the VFR environment than MSFS.  Removing autogen roads with X-Roads completes the effect.

XP12 lighting and colours are more natural too.  

[Bjoern 1,158]

LOD bias (sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat) adjustment scripts still work in XP12 and will help to recuperate FPS with X-World until there's some rendering engine side optimization.

The following is a LOD bias comparison done with XP12b7 with X-World Europe 1.2 at 1440p on a 5800X, 6900XT on Arch Linux with everything but AA (4x) enabled/at maximum and 5 AI aircraft.

LOD_bias_rat = 1 provides the baseline FPS. Objects stretch out to the horizon.

 

Lod_bias_rat = 1.5 yields a 25% increase in FPS at no loss of object draw distance.

 

LOD_bias_rat = 2 yields 65% more FPS with a negligible degradation in object draw distance.

 

Lod_bias_rat = 3 yields 100% more FPS with notable degradation in object draw distance.

 

X-Plane slider influence:

 

Lod_bias_rat = 1 with rendering distance and world object density dropped down to "High". 26% more FPS compared to baseline.

 

Oddly enough, the houses look slightly different at high object density compared to maximum. I can restore the look from the very first image by increasing the slider again though.

 

Lod_bias_rat = 2, rendering distance and world object density at "High". 100% more FPS compared to baseline.

 

 

Takeaway:

If FPS get too bad for you with X-World Europe, decrease sim/private/controls/reno/LOD_bias_rat and, if necessary, drop the density slider to "High".

[Murmur 3,944]

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

I recall your post a while back with the mod applied to the 2D XP trees that made them more full, which did look better in some situations.

 

22 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

XP12 lighting and colours are more natural too.  

 

Yeah with addon scenery and better trees, also considering the realistic lighting of XP12, it's harder to declare a winner in terms of scenery realism (no orthophotos in XP in the screenshot below though):